Young Thongor (18 page)

4

Voices from the Past

Zakeela fled down the tunnel path until she tripped over something that lay in the shadows at her feet. It was her clothes, heaped in a pile where the Sark’s men had left them after stripping her. No doubt they had planned to sell the rich brocades and silks and convert the profits into heady
sarn
-wine. She reached mechanically for her garments and hastily donned them, as if some instinctive female modesty overruled even the panic she felt. Arzang Pome, he who had betrayed her, had in the days of his favor bedecked her with various pendants and broaches of his favorite precious metal, and she made to pocket these rather than take the time now to arrange them. But one of them, a large silver disk polished to mirror-like clarity, caught her eye as a glimmer of torch light seemed to kindle it into unnatural illumination. The strange light made her feel sleepy for a split second, then she saw, or imagined she saw, in it the wizened face of her mentor Belshathla. There was no sound, but she felt sure she could read the old man’s lips as he spoke to her. Was it a dream? Had she fainted in her terror?

“…long last discovered the riddle of the Silver Shadows! It was in the
Scarlet Edda
all along, if one but had eyes to see it! I found the clue in a glyph on the Black Hawk’s sword! Then, just now, it all made sense! My dear, here is what you must do. Otherwise your champion stands no chance…”

Moments later, Zakeela gathered her wits and plunged down the tunnel, back in the direction of the growing sounds of struggle. She passed the broken crossbeams upon which her former master had intended she be sacrificed as a titbit to sate the monster. She noticed the stone debris fallen from the walls and marveled at the power of the demon that had dislodged them, fearing for the safety of the young Valkarthan. Then she came into view of the pair of combatants. Thongor’s situation, she saw, was desperate. He picked up and threw at the creature what stones lay to hand, but none had any effect. It was all he could do to side-step the deadly lunges of the thing. She was sure he might have evaded it long enough to regain the safety of the tunnel and flee as she had done, but he had not. Apparently flight was not in his makeup.

Hoping not to distract him for a fatal instant, she nonetheless called out for his attention. “Thongor! Here! Strike him with this, if you can!” And she threw something as far as she could in his direction, hoping Thongor would manage to reach it before his untiring foe did. He succeeded, owing to the fact that his enemy, little more than an animated engine of destruction, possessed not the curiosity to note the object she had thrown, like the apple of discord, into the fray.

Stooping down to grasp the shiny object, then side-stepping another attack, Thongor saw that Zakeela had thrown him a mere trinket and, if he were not mistaken, one he had earlier seen her wearing. It was some manner of broach wrought cunningly from silver in the shape of a scimitar. He was to smite the giant reptile with a toy like this? He smiled briefly at the devotion that must have moved her to this gesture of desperation. But as swift as thought, here came the lunge of the titan, and he instinctively made to deflect it. He thrust forth the fist which still grasped the sword-ornament, and to his amazement he saw it rake the reticulated hide of the beast. Where it touched the creature, it sparked and smoked, and the thing recoiled. There was a queer kind of flash of negative light, if such were possible, and then he again faced the giant figure, little having visibly changed.

He cast the toy aside and drew his sword once more. Futile gesture as it might be, he resolved to go down fighting. Heedless of the probable outcome, Thongor swung the mighty broadsword like an ax directly into the monster’s heaving chest—and a great bloody swath appeared! He brought the sword down again and cleft deep into one of the pillar-like forearms. He had passed at last from mere defence to attack, his more accustomed role, and it felt good!

The scaly fiend now stood bewildered by pain and surprise, if Thongor read its inhuman countenance correctly. It screamed in agony as the Valkarthan chopped again and again at its staggering form, letting loose geysers of steaming gore and stinking reptilian blood. In mere moments, Thongor was soaked in the noisome stuff, but in the berserk rage that possessed him, he scarcely marked it. Long after the guardian of the treasure had ceased to be any threat, Thongor kept at it, like a grim and remorseless butcher, till the tunnel floor was littered with the sundered parts of the lifeless carcass.

5

The Riddle Solved

Zakeela looked at her champion, as he turned from his bloody work, with a mixture of horror, relief, and desire. Some of this she thought she saw mirrored in the barbarian’s strange golden eyes, the only part of him not drenched with gore.

Thongor looked at himself and laughed. “I’m not a pretty sight, I fear. But if it’s a pretty sight you want to see, my princess, look yonder.” He pointed with his dripping sword to the gleaming silver hoard. There were heaps upon heaps of goblets, crowns, shields, breastplates, statues, as well as a number of utensils harder to place, things that might easily have been designed for the use of non-human anatomy, as that of the Dragon Kings.

“We’ll be rich on this stuff.” Thongor the professional thief spoke now, all thought of the preternatural horrors of the past hour clean forgotten. “I swear that fat bastard Arzang Pome will lay nary a bejewelled finger upon it. Somehow we’ll get it out of here ourselves, and…” With that, the Valkarthan stooped down and sought to gather into his arms a sample of the hard-won booty.

Zakeela murmured, “My lord, I fear…”

At once Thongor found his arms empty of treasure, and the whole subterranean hall likewise! He looked around him with outrage and bafflement. “By the Flame Lord! What witchery is this?”

She could not suppress a laugh, hoping not to enrage him further. “It is witchery indeed! As was that whereby you were able to slay the guardian! As I fled, the spirit of the mage Belshathla came to me and bade me cast you the broach. A thing of silver, it proved fatal to a creature of black magic. It dispelled the sorcery that shielded the monster from all harm, so that you might engage it in fair combat.”

Still confused, Thongor asked, “But how can that be? After all, it was the guardian of a hoard of silver such as no man ever saw!”

“That was the riddle which the mage at last deciphered. There was never any treasure—only silver shadows, an enchantment placed there by the Dragon Kings, or by some sorcerers at any rate, to lure greedy mortals to their doom.”

“Then I have very nearly paid with my life for the greed of another!”

She came to him and embraced him, heedless now of the foulness with which he was soaked, kissed him, and said, “My warrior, let us make haste to depart the city, for Arzang Pome will soon enough learn that no treasure is forthcoming, and he will surely believe you have made away with it.”

“As I would, if only I could, by Gorm!” Thongor laughed, then swept up Zakeela in a great embrace. “Come, my would-be princess, let us back to the house of Belshathla. I suspect he has resources to aid two fugitives. We’ll settle up with Arzang Pome another time.”

INTRO TO KEEPER OF THE EMERALD FLAME

Thongor’s buccaneers continue to cause havoc among the rich merchants of Shembis, until Arzang Pome, the infuriated Sark, begins a determined campaign to bring the troublesome pirate to heel.

KEEPER OF THE EMERALD FLAME

1

The Sign of the Skull

The Daotar Dorgand Tul shifted gingerly in the hard saddle, scratched irritably at the bite of a stinging insect, and wished for the thousandth time that he had entered the priesthood rather than obeying his father’s desire by purchasing a commission in the legions of Arzang Pome, the Lord of Shembis.

He was a fat, soft-faced little man, with quick, clever eyes, a petulant mouth and a waspish temper. For all his silver-gilded cuirass, jeweled honors and the martial-looking longsword that hung at one plump thigh, he seemed distinctly out of place at the head of a punitive company of warriors. And, indeed, with every league his troop penetrated into the dense jungles his dissatisfaction with the military life grew more profound.

The bad-tempered little Daotar was hot and weary, and his buttocks and thighs ached from long hours on
kroter
-back. He sat slouched in the saddle, dreaming of a soft couch, cooling breezes from the gulf, nubile slave girls at his beck and call and tall, frosted goblets of spiced wine. He wondered if he would ever feel comfortable again.

For seven days and nights now he and his troop of warriors had plunged ever deeper into the jungles of southern Kovia, until by now he was heartily sick of the whole business. The massive crimson boles of soaring
lotifer
trees rose all about him; snaky vines dangling from low branches overhead caught the plumes of his helm; stinging gnats whirled in buzzing clouds about him as he guided his plodding
kroter
through thick bushes of
tiralons
, the strange green roses of ancient Lemuria. Behind him, half a hundred footsore warriors toiled along, their mail smeared with sap and black with mud, and they longed for the comforts of civilization no less than he.

For the ten-thousandth time he cursed this Northlander savage and his gang of bandits, whose elusive track they followed. The bold young Valkarthan raider had been harrying the caravan routes for the past six months, and his depredations cut deeply into the revenues of Arzang Pome, who delighted more in the clink of fat gold coins than in the caresses of all his women and his perfumed boys. At length, stung beyond endurance by the daring of the bold young bandit chieftain, the Sark of Shembis had sent a troop of warriors on his trail…and it was the sad fate of Dorgand Tul to be the commander of that troop.

The day was wearing on apace. Ere long the gold disc of Aedir the Sun god would expire in crimson splendor on the western horizon and the thick jungle night would cloak all of Kovia in darkness. It was the night that Dorgand Tul feared most, for then the monstrous predators were a-prowl—the slinking
vandars
, the great black lions of the Lemurian jungles, the savage Beastmen, and—most dread of all—the colossal jungle dragons whose enormous size and ferocity rendered them virtually impossible to kill.

Dorgand Tul shivered at the thought. The days were exhausting and muddy and vile with the steaming jungle reek—but the nights were made hideous by the coughing roar of hunting reptiles and the glare of hungry eyes through the blackness, mirroring the flicker of the watch fires. Already he had lost two spearmen of his troop to the jungle brutes, and, were it not for the fact that his own tent was set each night in the very centre of the camp, the plump little Daotar would have trembled to the depths of his soul for his own precious hide.

Just then his
kroter
shied, almost toppling him from the saddle. He seized the saddle horn in one fat fist, straightening the plumed helm, which had slipped down over his eyes, with the other hand and snarling a blasphemous curse as he saw the cause of the disturbance.

The bushes ahead parted and the muddy, haggard figure of one of his advance scouts appeared, making a sketchy salute.

“Well, what is it, Yazlar? Don’t tell me you have lost their trail again?” he demanded shrilly.

The old scout shook his head. “No, Daotar. It continues straight ahead. I estimate they are now only four hours ahead of us.”

“Well, what then?”

The scout turned, gesturing for Dorgand Tul to follow, and vanished in the underbrush. The fat little officer thumped the
kroter
’s ribs with his booted heel and guided the weary beast through the bushes, whimpering a curse as thorn-edged leaves stung his hand. The
kroter
shouldered through the glossy-leafed bushes, and Dorgand Tul found himself in a little clearing.

The glade was small, hedged about with densely packed trees. Reining the beast to a standstill, the officer glanced about, and then his eyes caught an ominous and grisly emblem and he froze, while a small thrill of apprehension ran over him.

A tall pole of gaunt black wood thrust up from the muddy earth at the edge of the clearing. Atop the pole was affixed a grinning, naked human skull. A cryptic hieroglyph was etched in crimson paint on the brow of the death’s-head. The eyes of Dorgand Tul were caught and held by that coiling, crimson symbol.

“The sign of Omm,” whispered the old scout.

The fat little Daotar paled, swallowed, but could not tear his eyes from the blot of bloody color blazoned on the grinning skull. It held his gaze with a horrid fascination, like the cold enigma in the eyes of a snake.

“Did the bandits…pass it?” he asked at last, in a weak voice.

The old scout nodded, his lank, gray locks swinging. “They did,” he said somberly.

A flame of malignant delight blazed up in the eyes of Dorgand Tul. New energy surged within his weary, flaccid form. He snatched up the reins and wheeled the
kroter
about and plunged through the bushes by which he had entered the clearing. The first bedraggled warriors of his troop were just catching up to him as he retraced his path. A scarred, hard-faced sergeant came forward to receive orders at the Daotar’s impatient gesture.